


but we were a maybe (and never a must)

by WhimperSoldier



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Auguste (Captive Prince) Lives, Damen takes Auguste back to Ios with him, Like, Multi, Unrequited Love, a whole lot of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 17:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14049138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhimperSoldier/pseuds/WhimperSoldier
Summary: He is too soft,Auguste thought,without a sword in his hand and a helm on his head.





	but we were a maybe (and never a must)

**Author's Note:**

> An unfinished drabble I know I won't finish and will never see the light of day if I don't post it now.

They shoved the man down, his face bloodied and bruised. His right eye was swollen shut and his once shining blonde hair was limp and matted where a gash had opened along his hairline. Even with the grime, his armor was unmistakable.

“Is this him?” Kastor asked, his fingers tangled into a fist, yanking the man’s head backwards at a painful angle and causing the sun to blind him.

Damen could feel his stomach clench, the small meal of fruits and salted meats churning uncomfortably in his gut. The lines in the sand seemed so clear in the heat of things, but now when the dust settled, Damen saw too many faces lying dead in the dirt to have any room left for pride.

“I can’t be sure,” Damen muttered, his voice soft. “The man I killed was also wearing the Prince’s armor. This could very well just be another unfortunate substitute.”

He knew it was a lie. The prince, because that was who that was kneeling in the dirt waiting for them to lob his head off, knew it too, and started breathing faster, eyes widened in confusion and distrust. 

“Kill the man and be done with it, prince or no,” His father sighed, waving a hand in disregard, so confident in his victory he was blinded. Both sides had lost so much, could Vere handle losing their prince as well?

Damen thought back to the little blonde boy, cherub cheeks and a waist so small he could wrap his hands around it, pounding at his chest, screaming slurs so disgusting Damen could do little more than hold his small head against his chest until he tired himself out.

“I’ll keep him,” Damen said, not realizing the words had come out of his mouth until Kastor laughed. His father found the situation more serious, grabbing Damen’s arm in a crushing grip and lowering his voice to avoid being overheard by the enemy soldier. It was no problem, Damen could tell Auguste only caught every other word.

“I know you think you can control him, but slaves trained later in life are never as sweet,” His father said, voice soft, as if he was trying to convince a child to trade a toy. Damen felt a spark of anger flame to life in his chest and it must have shown on his face, because Theomedes just sighed, waving his hands at his brother to release the man into Damen’s care.

~~~

_He is too soft,_ Auguste thought, _without a sword in his hand and a helm on his head._

Damianos the Lion they call him, golden in the low light of the braziers, slowly dipping the white linen into water to wipe away the blood caked onto Auguste’s face. It felt like a pet, rubbing along his jaw before shaving him.

For all of his skill with a blade, here, he looked like the boy he was, only nine and ten summers old. Scars dotted his skin but his jaw was still plump with baby fat, or perhaps he would always look slightly cherubic with his curls scattered across his forehead.

_A face so sweet,_ he thought, _like Laurent’s._

He pushed thought of his beloved brother to the back of his mind, focusing instead on the best way to escape. Damianos was softhearted but his sword was sharp and the moment Auguste made a run for it, he would be quickly reacquainted with it’s bite.

His father’s hidden plan to avoid Auguste even entering the field was poorly planned and cowardly, but he couldn’t not be thankful that he would live to hug his brother again, unlike poor Jeane, whose hair was too bright and whose armor was nothing to an arm like Damianos’.

He remembered the sound of the blow, the steel hissing together and the chestplate cracking under the pressure. The images didn’t slide together, the inverse of a ferocious beast cutting through Auguste’s men pressed carefully into the delicate man before him, still young and with a heart unburdened by the harsh realities of the world.

“You will not heal for many months,” He said, voice quiet but deep. A strong voice for a strong man. “If you plan to escape I would wait until your leg has healed, at least.”

“I can not wait that long,” He hissed, ignoring the searing pain of a rag dipped in alcohol pressed into the wound in his side. “My brother needs me.”

“Your brother is safe, he is with your uncle,” Damianos said openly, as if he had not just revealed Auguste’s worst nightmare. Would he try to ransom him back? Maybe kill him slowly for the pain caused to his people?

“You knew?”

“Of course,” Damianos seemed mystified at his fear, smiling and brushing Auguste’s bangs out of his eyes with marked kindness. “But much has been lost today, that boy, your brother, he needs not to lose another.”

“My uncle can not be trusted,” Auguste pleaded, pressing his hands into the other man’s, the blood of Damianos’ countrymen still encrusted under his fingernails. “Please.”

~~~

Damen was an idiot.

It took Auguste weeks to convince the boy to let him send a letter, even then it did little more than reveal his continued survival to his brother. Damen, because that was what the little monster wanted to be called, thought this would be just enough for Laurent, and was rudely informed of his mistake in a scalding response less than a week later.

Auguste wanted to cry into the paper where his little brother had been, press his fingers where his fingers had been and pray for his safety.

~~~

It was slow work, healing, it was even slower work untangling the innate societal norms instilled in Damen since childhood.

It was almost to be expected then, that it would be Laurent with all of his brashness and wit, that caused the first chink in the cultural armor Damen wore, allowing for picking away until they hit soft skin underneath.

Laurent compared slavery to what Auguste’s uncle had tried to do to him.

It was a brutal, sickening analogy. Laurent sent it from Arquitart where loyalists protected him, but it reminded Damen of the twistedness he’d not thought of when the now Regent had placed both hands on little Laurent’s shoulders, tugging his small body against him not in comfort as Damen thought, but possessiveness. It was a barb that hit and dug into where Damen was the weakest, the moment he had been unable to protect a boy he’d spent months coming to care for.

Auguste found it despicable if not brilliant in its tactical efficiency. 

“It is nothing like that!” Damen cried out, his eye shimmering with tears Auguste knew he felt too old to shed. The other prince simply sighed.

“Shaping and molding a young person, without their explicit knowledge, into something they are often not mentally ready for, that takes place at the beck and call of another forever and ever until their master sees them as to old and unappealing, simply things to be disregarded.” Auguste hissed. Damen was, for all of his brash attitude and boisterous personality, a soft soul, but this was not an issue that could be brushed aside. “Taken from your family, your friends, stripped of everything that makes you who you are in favor of what your owners wish you to be, forced to brand yourself with cuffs as a constant reminded of your captivity and bondage, damnit Damen, don’t you see how twisted this is?”

Damen’s curls were scattered across his face, his lip twitched and he bit down on it to stop the tears from falling but only succeeded in splitting the thin skin between his teeth. The thoughtless sound of pain was enough to push Auguste off the bed and next to the prince, pressing the loose fabric of his outfit to his mouth to stop the bleeding.

“Silly boy,” Auguste chided, soft as he was with Laurent, and ignored how surprised Damen seemed. He knew Kastor was a greedy, selfish personification of all things bad about bastards, but how he could ever come to hate Damen so viciously was beyond him. Damen wanted little more than the love of his family. Even at twenty, never had he been challenged or fought on anything, confused and disillusioned, Auguste saw only a young man unsure about his standing in a place that once was a foundation.

Auguste ignored Damen’s stare which fell to his lips in favor of going to pour a glass of water for the both of them.

~ ~ ~

His uncle was at court meaning Auguste was all but chained to Damen’s rooms.

Auguste knew what the whole of the palace thought his and Damen’s relationship was, even when the truth was the polar opposite. Embracing the lethargic nature of a day without planning, his brother’s letters, or Damen, he reclined in bed, ignoring the sheet which still smelled of sweat.

He knew it was not a slave’s seeing as Damen had avoided all of his harem for months now, but the tang in the air was unmistakable. Maybe a soldier who had almost bested him in the ring, or a pretty noblewoman that fluttered her lashes and said the right thing. Auguste knew Damen had a type and urges that pushed him from the room late into the morning, even seeing as he had no other rooms to retire to.

He groaned, thinking about rereading a letter from Laurent, still hidden away, safe and protected until his coronation, where he detailed the activities he had taken up in his brother’s absence. Swordplay and languages being two major choices.

The future seemed so far away. Every time they got close, moved a piece one place, his uncle moved another, shift, block, regroup, repeat. It was only because of Damen they had made any headway at all.

The boy’s thoughts were as wild and mismatched as his heart, bouncing around like a baby rabbit, and thus made them especially hard to predict. His uncle knew not of his continued existence, but he was keenly aware of the civil war brewing along the border where little tales were told of the new regent and the dirty acts taken to gain his power. Auguste sighed and made to stand when the door banged open, letting in Damen and a clingy blonde.

This was the night he met Jokaste.

~ ~ ~

She was beautiful, wicked smart, and completely in control of everything around her.

An invaluable asset in the fight against his uncle, she tempered Damen’s foolhardy heart and smoothed Auguste’s sharp tongue. Neither men were good actors, they had only gotten this far by avoiding questioning, but Jokaste was as skilled in deception as she was in harp, which was to say, exceptionally skilled.

The only set back had been the silence from Laurent for a solid two months after their inclusion of her. He’d raved and included superfluous sentences in hopes of changing their minds but only made Auguste feel firmer in his convictions.

Laurent was sixteen years old when things become infinitely more complicated. 

~ ~ ~

Damen was in love with him.

It was not secret, Theomedes himself had taken Auguste aside and demand he remember he was but a slave, never a ruler. The whole of the court knew how their crown prince doted on his favored slave, but there was always a space between them, placed there by Auguste himself.

Jokaste was in love with Damen.

He could see it from her perspective, the sweet nature he showed to those who cared enough to look, the heart which would move heaven and earth to see a smile, he was everything she had never thought to ask for.

Auguste was in love Jokaste.

Her sharp nature, her sweet soul, the machinations laid under thin skin as if daring him to look deep to peel back a layer and see what is under.

Auguste was also pretty sure Laurent loved Damen meaning with Damen loving Auguste who loved Jokaste who in turn loved Damen meant they were all a mess of emotions and unfilled hope which would be a perfect foothold for his uncle.

Damnit.

~ ~ ~

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr @ whimper-soldier


End file.
